Every year I say “I can’t believe it’s XX year already!” so I am not going to say it this time, but obviously, here we are. The end of a year, the end of a decade, the end of another chapter. Reflection is obviously something that happens around this time of year, particularly if you are a goal setter and achiever, like myself. I am already thinking about my word for next year (STABILITY) while reflecting on my word from this year (CLARITY) and thinking about all the amazing experiences and people I’ve had the pleasure of having/meeting. If you recall last year’s year end blog post, I made a slideshow video to bring to light the reality of being an entrepreneur and the illusion of having it all together. This year I focused less on chasing the millionaire’s dream (no shame if that’s your game) and more time investing in my relationships and getting clear on what I NEED for me to truly be content. While I don’t have the exact answer, I can tell you that it isn’t exceeding 6 figures in exchange for loneliness, poor physical and mental health, and lack of joy. I realize it’s getting closer to my purpose and mission, it’s striving to be a better person tomorrow than I was today, and it’s choosing opportunities that truly make those infinite dollars worth my finite time. This year I traveled a lot (though I said I wouldn’t), I taught a lot (though I said I would focus on my photography at home), and I created a lot (though I said I would showcase more client work). This tells me that change is in the air, and maybe y’all saw it coming before I did, but I was too damn stuck in my ways to part with being purely a boudoir photographer. I tried to tell myself to be content. To stay here - it’s consistent. But I’ve never done well with consistency and I’ve never done well in limbo, just ask my mom. So this year was equal parts frustrating and liberating, but ultimately, I was rewarded with clarity.
I cared what people thought - and then I didn’t.
As a photographer and educator I am privy to being in a lot of photo-centric Facebook groups and every two seconds there are people in there bitching about photographers becoming educators and how it makes them less of a photographer. For some shitty reason, I started to believe them and held even tighter to my title as a boudoir specialist. Then I took more time for myself this year, disconnected from the ol’ interwebs and truly listened and went back to what I know:
”What is your mission?”
”To impact and empower as many people as possible.”
”What is the most efficient way that you can make that happen?”
”By educating and being a leader in body positivity and psychology for the boudoir photographers around me, so THEY can go forward an empower THEIR clients, thus extending my reach and empowering as many people as possible!”
My mission isn’t to PHOTOGRAPH as many people as possible, I already do that! My missions is to EMPOWER and this can be done in a multitude of ways and I am blessed to have the capabilities to pull it off. My strengths lie in the realm of communication, leadership, positivity, and strategy. I love helping photographers figure out their own shit, so they can be the best goddamned humans and photographers possible.
Me affecting one, affects many. It’s that whole drop in the bucket thing.
2. I thought I had to do it alone - and then I didn’t.
This year I finished my Applied Positive Psychology course and essentially had 8 months of therapy for myself. I realized that I had let my Ego run the show for a while and it REALLY liked to be in control. I thought I could do everything, I thought I could grow this business but wasn’t around enough to truly put the effort in. I told myself I couldn’t reach out to other photographers because they wouldn’t understand my frustrations, I thought I couldn’t hire a business coach - because no one would get me (like I’m some sort of special unicorn). But then, I started to let people in. I began talking about the reality of running my business in my everyBODIES education group on Facebook and let them know when I “fucked up” and it helped shed the shame that surrounds lack of perfection in the photography industry. I hired my mom (yes, I actually paid her) to coach me and kick my ass when I got uncomfortable (and she did!), and I started reaching out to my friends and initiated things instead of waiting for them to do it. One thing I learned in my psychology class was how depression and anxiety will make you think you are alone and in 2018, that’s what happened - i secluded myself so that when it came time to ask for help I didn’t think I could - until I did.
3. I thought I knew what I wanted - and then I didn’t.
This was probably the hardest. At the end of 2018, I brought on colleagues to help me grow the business to be able to empower as many people as possible and while I tried to give it my all, it ended up not working out. But if I hadn’t tried, I wouldn’t have known and unfortunately, that’s the nature of the business and I, fortunately, am the type of person that makes moves when things aren’t aligned properly. When you run a business, you try to listen to your customers, but sometimes it’s in listening more to them than to your heart and soul, that you end up taking the wrong path. No one likes to let people go and it’s never easy to change the course when you are the captain of the ship, but someone has to do it. My Ego (I) thought that in order to stay relevant I had to create a boudoir empire - turns out that that was way further from my mission of empowering as many people as possible. Imagine the game hot & cold, well, the more people I hired, the more my intuition was yelling YOU ARE FUCKING FROZEN ARE YOU LISTENING YET???? I couldn’t have been further from my path. It all goes back to me having the conversation with my mom when I first started this journey:
“What would I do if I lost my eye sight and couldn’t do photography any more?”
”What would you do?”
”I would speak, write, educate on the body image, fatphobia, etc.”
Photography is just my medium, not my message and if I was spending all my time managing, micro-managing, training, and teaching in addition to running essentially a second business, I had absolutely no time to speak about my message - because I was too focused on the medium.
4. I thought I knew what I needed - and then I didn’t.
I thought I needed to make over $200,000/year to be a “professional”. I thought I needed to have a fully booked calendar to be “successful”. I thought I needed to preach about body image in order for people to “get it”. I thought I needed to have fancy set designs, a fabulous wardrobe, and big studio spaces for clients to love me. Turns out, all I need is self assurance, self compassion, and self motivation to be what I want to be - oh and the self awareness to know when enough is enough from the peanut gallery on the internets. No on knows what I need more than I do. End of story.
5. I loved being a photographer - and then I didn’t.
Wow. Writing that and then saying it out loud was harder than I thought. This goes hand in hand with everything above.
Do I love photography - yes!
Do I love doing boudoir sessions more than any other type of session - yes!
Do I love being a photographer in the grand sense - not anymore!
BUT DO I LOVE WORKING WITH PHOTOGRAPHERS? - FUCK. YES.
Here’s what I do love right now: I love being a mentor. I love being a coach. I love standing in front of a room teaching the things I am passionate about. I love working with like minded individuals who respect my time, boundaries, and talent. I love spending my time educating those who truly want to learn, want to become educated and want to learn to do better - for themselves and for their clients. I love teaching the technical bits of what I do and helping people shake their shit up. I love doing creative photoshoots that make people say “HOLY SHIT I WOULD LOVE TO DO THAT”. I love learning new techniques, coming up with challenges, and pushing people to be more, do more, and achieve more. Most importantly, I love helping photographers remember what it means to be human. I love infusing body image education and psychology and all the important stuff that we don’t understand makes a huge fucking difference with how we interact with our clients and ourselves.
So, what does this mean? Will I still be taking sessions? Absolutely! I am not hanging up this camera (thank God, I just bought a new one this year!) but rather transitioning it’s purpose. Next year, I am only taking 7 sessions a month for those humans who are ready to push themselves, get out of their comfort zone and recognize their awesomeness. Of those 7 sessions, 2 of them will be CREATIVE COLLAB SESSIONS. This means you will come play with me in the studio for 30 minutes, I will style, shoot, pose, and light for what I desire and you will get whatever comes out of the shoot (minimum 5 images maximum 20 images) More details on this HERE.
But in the ultimate scheme of things, it means that I will be focusing more on education, on workshops, on Body Image Bootcamp, on my Shake Shit Up series, on coaching photographers, on creating content that makes photographers think and feel challenged. If you are a photographer and want in on this good stuff, head to our Facebook group here: everyBODIES education.
SO, 2019 TRULY DID BRING CLARITY AND IN 2020 I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO STABILITY.
I am planning on traveling just as much (if not more), but the stability will come from the things I do for myself. For 5 years I put the business before myself and while it has been amazing fun, introduced me to some beautiful amazing powerful women and men, and helped me create something bigger than myself it’s time that I give back to me. I am going to focus on filling my cup back up so I can give in even bigger ways, so I can empower more powerfully, and so I can be the change that I truly wish to see in the world.
The excerpt I chose to narrate for this video comes from one of my favorite books: Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes Ph D.
